Adnams Ale

We visited the extraordinary Noz* discount store in Loches today, in search of manbags#...
(it's a long story).

L>R: Adnams Innovation, Hardy & Hansons Rocking Rudolph and Captain Chrismas, Elgood's Golden Newt.

We didn't find those, but instead there turned out to be rather a lot of English beer
a huge stack from Adnam's of Southwold...  
Innovation [7.6% ABV] at 1.79€ a bottle...
a few bottles from Elgood's of Wisbech...  
Golden Newt [4.6% ABV] at 0.65€...
and two Christmas Ales from Hardy & Hanson [owned and brewed by Greene King]...  
Captain Christmas and Rocking Rudolph [both 4.2% ABV] at 0.75€...
the last two available on draught, normally...
Rocking Rudolph is particularly nice!!
But we've never tried either bottled.

All well within "sell by" date and the Adnam's a strong ale at that.
Needless to say we bought some...
but at the time there was plenty of the Adnams and Hardy & Hansons brews left.
Just thought you ought to know.

[* purveyor of the remnants of broken dreams]
[# and handbags...]

Discovered treasures...

We have a barn full of boxes....
And amongst those boxes are ones containing beers....

I was searching for the box K39 containing the Moulinex Juicer for Susan and found a box with beers that had remained packed since leaving our cellar in Leeds.
I never found K39... it didn't exist!!
But it turned out that the juicer was in box K38... which wasn't on the list. They were amongst the last boxes to be packed and Pauline, who was attempting to supervise the contents of the boxes and record them.... was getting very frazzled!!

However, back to the beers discovered....
we decided to rescue a couple tonight.
Rescue?...
We lost a few bottles in the big freeze this February...
fortunately nothing that cannot be replaced...
but still a sticky waste!

So our evening meal was cream of pumpkin, carrot and tomato soup, bread, cheeses and beer.
Luverly!

The ones we chose were from Briscoe's Brewery in Otley, West Yorkshire.
Dr. Paul Briscoe started brewing commercially in 1998 having been made redundant... he had been brewing successfully on a non-commercial basis for years... making special beers for friends and colleagues... as well as 'special' bottled runs for the Fell Runners that Paul competes against... yes, he's a brewer with the runs!
The 'brewery' in his cellar was expanded... by using a garden shed for the messy first stages of the process, and then piping the wort down into the cellar for the fermentation and racking of the final result.
He has three 'core' brews, available in local pubs and at the Otley Beer Festival...

3 Peaks Ale (4.5% ABV) a strong pale premium bitter;
Chevin Chaser (4.3% ABV) a refreshing pale-coloured all malt bitter with a distinct hop finish.; 
Chevin Light (3.8% ABV) a classic "Yorkshire-styled" session bitter;

....all very tasty.

The beers we had tonight are:
Puddled & Barmy Ale (5.8% ABV) a sweetish, smooth dark old ale. [1998]

The crown cork on the bottle had rusted somewhat... and the beer poured into the jug on the flat side of petillant... so I served it in small wine glasses.... it was very nice despite being almost flat... answering to the above description perfectly... not bad for a bottle of beer that was 14 years old. It was dry enough not to be too slippery! The yeast was 'nailed' to the bottom of the bottle.

this was followed by:
Shane’s Shamrock Stout (4.5% ABV) a slightly less dry Irish-style stout with a hint of chocolate.[1999 - a special bottling for our wedding!!]

This bottle was in much better condition... and as you can see from the photograph had a good head... much dryer than the Puddled & Barmy. There is a hint of choclate... 
hold on I'll just try another sip... 
yes, because of the dryness, it does come across as an 80% cocoa mass bar. 
[Well, if wine writers want to go all descriptive so can I...] 
Seriously, I am drinking it as I type, and the flavour is of a very dry chocolate...  
the beer is much dryer than Guinness.
Pauline commented that we should have drunk it on our aniversary... 

oh well....  
only 40 days late... 
so I'll raise a glass to the Keighley Beer Festival where we met over the Foreign Beers counter. 
And now go and refill it!!
Why had these beers kept? The secret is in the bottle... both brews were on the yeast. Had the crown cork not rusted on the first bottle, it would have had a full head... not a vinho verde bubbliness.

The cheeses were Salers, Forme d'Ambert [blue] and two St.Maure Chevre logs... cheese goes very well with dark dry beers, but the Forme d'Ambert went with sables anglais... McVities Digestives.

There's a bit more about Paul's brewery here... it is somewhat out of date... the Bowling Green venture collapsed when Paul broke an arm fell running and couldn't brew... then the pub owner decided to retire and sold the pub to Weatherspoons... sadly, it is not what it was!! 

A sad day for Leeds

Brewing at the Tetleys Brewery in Leeds ceased last Friday. Tetleys has been on the same site, just across the bridge from the City Centre, since 1822, and 170 workers will lose their jobs. A lot of Tetleys Bitter has flowed under the bridge since then, and Tim and I have had a bit of it, not to mention Tetleys Mild and (while it existed) Imperial. Not among the world's greatest brews in my opinion, but back in the early 80's when we used to collect all the beers for York Beer Festival ourselves (no beer agencies then), we had to ensure that there was a supply of Tetleys Bitter for those punters who insisted on drinking nothing else. For every beer ticker there's a beer conservative, though the latter are now more inclined to stay at home drinking Smoothflow out of cans rather than they are to go to beer festivals, or to pubs for that matter. Thank goodness for the number, quality and success of microbreweries, both in Britain and in France.We had a very pleasant bottle of Turone Blanche yesterday!

John Bull Memories

From 1973 until 1987 I lived in York and it's still dear to me. Somehow I became associated with an organisation called the Campaign for Real Ale, can't imagine why. Another CAMRA member was Neville Hobson, who worked in his family bakery and yearned to be a publican. When his father passed away, Neville sold the bakery and sought to realise his dream. At that time (1982) there was only one pub in York that was a "free house" (the Spread Eagle): all the rest were tied to breweries. It was a struggle for anyone without years of experience to break into the licensed trade as Nev wished to do. At length he found an ex-pub, built in "road house" style in the 1930s, in use as a store by the Mazda garage next door. He and, as I recall, a bunch of CAMRA members cleared out the old pub, and eventually the John Bull opened. Thanks to a succession of highly responsible bar staff (Jeff, for example, and Rowan), the Bull became recognised as a great place to meet and socialise, where you could get an excellent range of beer and stonking sandwiches. Rowan used to get supplies for the sarnies from Sainsbury's just round the corner and across the river Foss. Half a loaf, a slice of cheese an inch thick, ditto of pickles and about two inches of green salad, were combined into a sandwich you had to dislocate your jaw to eat, anaconda style. On Youtube are two videos of the pub in its last days. The Mazda dealership wanted to expanded their showroom, and the John Bull was in the way, so in 1994, some while after Nev himself had moved on, it was demolished. On the first of the videos you can see the list of sarnies! Cheese, Houmous, Beef, Ham....

There was no juke box, no piped music, and no TV. Particularly nice was that as a female I could go into the John Bull on my own, or on one occasion with the cat in her carrying box (the vet was just up the road) and find good conversation on any topic whatsoever. Many of the regulars were staff or students of the University. This week we welcomed two of those ex-regulars to our house in France - they live less than ten miles away in Charnizay! Who'd have thought it?

We're only here for the BIÈRE [part1]

....oh, and the wine too, of course! Oh...and cider!! And...

But this entry is about one of our local micro-breweries [brasseries artisinales].
Micro-breweries are growing fast in France - the first one we came across was the Brasserie Sancerroise, located at the bottom of the hill in Sancerre in the original 1920s brewhouse.

The Brewery Building [the range in 2002 is displayed on the little table]

When we made that first visit in 2002, they were using the pre-war equipment. The original brewery on the site was still running with this equipment until the 1960s.

Whilst Northern France still has a strong brewing tradition, people generally think of France as mainly a wine nation. But the tradition of brewing that remains in the North was far more widespread up to and shortly after the Great War. The region immediately around Sancerre had sixty-three breweries prior to this, which fell to less than thirty between the wars, ten after and by the mid-1960s....NONE!

The brewer, M. Dumas, has been trying to collect the bottles that the original sixty-three breweries used. All the bottles were different in either colour, printed ceramic Grolsch-style tops or embossed glass.... sometimes a combination of these. When we spoke with him, he'd managed to get sixty of the sixty-three, including variations from the same brewery; the whole collection being displayed round the clerestory window that runs around the entire brewery.

Just a few of the bottles.... visit the brewery to see the rest.

The hunt for that elusive trio has resulted, apparently, in an increase in the quality of the collection and variations of unrecorded type. He felt that the three missing breweries may have sold only in barrel [fût] in a brewhouse or used plain, unmarked and, therefore, unattractive and unidentifiable bottles. Whilst 'la France' has kept the records of the breweries, there is precious little record of these smaller breweries methods and advertising.

From the right in small [33cl] and large [75cl] the beers are Rose Blanche, La Drolesse and La Sans-Gen

Brasserie Sancerroise brews three main beers; nowadays using more state of the art, easy to clean stainless-steel plant [except for the original coppers!!]
These three brews...
Rose Blanche - a bière blanche [5° ABV] - Excellent, refreshing brew between a German 'weizen' beer and a Belgian 'Witt'. Great on a hot day, good with fish or fowl.
La Drolesse - a bière blonde [5.6° ABV] - A blond beer that is meant to resemble a Bavarian lager in style and taste. Good hoppy taste and again a refreshing glassful.
La Sans-Gen - la bière ambrée [6.2° ABV] - A ruby brew following the Austrian brewing style.. but also similar to a Trappist ale. Rich and warming, good for a cold evening.
...form the backbone, but also brewed are...
La Sancerroise: - a bière blonde [6.9° ABV] brewed using the "Lentille Verte du Berry" [Which we discovered at the Saffron Fair at Preuilly-sur-Claise.] I like this brew... complex, rich and different. Pollygarter doesn't... in fact she hates it!
We also had another... La Sanceroise de Mars - a light Spring time beer of 6.2%ABV.
And there is a final La Sancerroise which we haven't tried. La Sanceroise de Gruyt.
Check on their current website for their opening hours. The brewery is a worthwhile stop when visiting the Sancerre region for the wine. [The old 2002 website is here.]

Next time I'll write about the Brasserie Carpe Diem at Tilly in the Brenne.